Capacities of HTS systems

Abstract

Dr. Claude Shannon developed his famous channel capacity theorem for additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels. In a multi-beam high throughput satellite (HTS) system with colour reuse, channel induced impairments are not limited to noise but include substantial intra-system colour reuse interference that corrupts the intended signal. In this article, I examine HTS system channels, signals and interferers, and derive the HTS system Shannon channel capacities in theory. In the process, I clarify the theoretic foundation for the interference Gaussian distribution assumption from information theory perspective which is missing in the HTS capacity literature. I then apply probability theory to obtain average channel capacities over traffic and mobility caused interference power level uncertainties. The work extends original Shannon capacity theory to the HTS systems which allows HTS channel and system capacity estimation without the costly measurements data. It completes the study by including sample examples from a simulated HTS system with a user service coverage area of continental US to showcase the application of the theoretic development. The paper complements and refines the studies on the topic in similar works in the HTS literature.